Burak Bekdil
ARTICLES BY: Burak Bekdil
Islamism Is Stunting Turkish Academic Achievement
Turkey, with a population of 83 million and two Nobel Prizes won, ranks 62nd on the list of countries by Nobel laureates per capita. This...
Turkey’s Democracy Is Wasting Away
Turkey’s Islamist leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has not lost a single election, be it presidential, parliamentary, municipal, or referendum, since he came to power...
Will the Turkish Air Force and Erdogan Turn to Russia?
NATO’s second-biggest army had a deterrent air force both during and after the Cold War. In 2020, the Turkish Air Force (TuAF) was the world’s...
Erdogan’s Reckless Gambit: It’s Payback Time
Only three days after Turkey’s Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan sighed with relief at having side-stepped heavy European sanctions, he got slapped with heavy American...
Turkey’s Boycott Threats Are Preposterous
Turkey is a big market, so Ankara has a potentially powerful tool at its disposal with which to accomplish foreign policy goals. If 80 million...
Erdogan’s ‘Please Sanction Me’ Challenge
Due largely to a blend of over-ambitious policy objectives, an assertive neo-Ottomanism, a newfound hard power as a means to augment soft power, and colossal...
Many Turks Feel They Don’t Belong in Their Own Country
Turks have many good reasons not to be proud of their country’s current standing in terms of wealth, democracy, civil liberties, and justice. Turkey is...
In the Mediterranean, a Tug of War Between Turkey and the West
David L. Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, recently said: On...
What Biden’s Victory Means for Turkey
From the first day of the US presidential race, media and pundits who support Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vocally supported the incumbent even though...
Erdoğan’s Costly ‘Make Turkey Great Again’ Program
JNS.org - Turkey’s per capita income is barely $8,900. Its economy is suffering from double-digit inflation and unemployment rates. A quarter of Turkish youth is...
Erdogan and His ‘Arab Brothers’
Neither the Ottoman nor the modern Turkish language has ever been short of racist proverbs denigrating Arabs and their culture. No more, said Recep Tayyip...
Turkey: Radical Islamism’s Corrupted Symbolism
Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took yet another step toward undoing the secular legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, when...
Erdogan’s Pathetic Response to Israel-UAE Peace Deal
These days, Turkey’s foreign policy calculus, especially when it involves matters surrounding Israel, appears to reflect the thinking of a fifth-grade schoolboy. "I don’t like...
Turkey’s Generation Z: A Youth Challenge to Erdogan
Political scientists call them “Generation Z.” They are young Turks born around the turn of the millennium -- technically, those who were born in 1995...
Has Ben Rhodes Made the Descent Into Antisemitism?
Israeli Actress Shira Haas to Star in New American TV Series About Golda Meir
‘Why Not China?’ Protests Greet New Zealand Sovereign Wealth Fund’s Decision to Divest From Israeli Banks
Nikki Haley: Joe Biden Is Going Backward at the United Nations
Israel’s Environment Minister: Massive Oil Spill Was ‘Environmental Terrorism’ by Ship Sailing From Iran